At some point, however, you come to the recognition of what we call “essential truth.” Essential truth is not an insight about something but the apprehending of the immediate reality of the moment. This immediate reality is presence – the quality of beingness – as when one is experiencing an essential aspect, such as Compassion or Strength. We find out here that one of the most important characteristics of the essential presence is that it is self-aware consciousness. So if I am experiencing the presence of stillness, which is one flavor of essential Peace, nobody needs to be outside the stillness to be aware of the stillness. I and the stillness become one thing. My familiar sense of being a separate observer dissolves. There is no observer and no observed. The stillness itself, Essence itself, is awareness, but awareness with the quality of stillness and peace. And the awareness is pervasive throughout the presence of the stillness. The presence is completely aware – a medium of consciousness characterized by the quality of stillness.

On this essential level, the facts of your situation take on a sense of meaning, of richness and of depth, because they usher you into the realm of what really exists, beyond the surface of things. An essential truth is not a thought, an idea, a reaction, or an action; its most important characteristic is that it is an ontological presence -- it has a substantive existence. Although the relative truth of the situation can take us to the essential truth of it, the essential level is not dependent upon the situation. It is self-existing; it is its own realm existing independently of who we are and what we're doing

If we continue pursuing the truth of the situation, the essential truth will continue to expand and reveal ever-deeper dimensions of Being until, at some point, we come in contact with the formless dimensions of Being. When we first encounter essence, we experience it in the dimension of form, contained within us, in other words, "There is love in my heart, will in my belly, clarity in my head," and so on. At a deeper level, the presence of essence expands and loses its boundaries, and we realize that it is actually boundless. This is the beginning of experiencing the formless or boundless dimensions. The first formless dimension that we usually encounter … is that of Living Daylight: love that is not just within, that is everywhere -- pervading everything, penetrating all boundaries.

When we stay the course of loving the truth for its own sake, we find out at some point that there is an element of truth that manifests each time we discover a particular truth. This element of truth is not the particular event, but a certain state or quality of consciousness that arises as we discover the truth. When we investigate that consciousness, we discover that it is the essential aspect of truth, which is not a particular truth but the fact of truth, now experienced as a presence of true nature. In other words, to love truth is to love our true nature, for our true nature is the element that makes it possible for us to discern truth. To put it differently, the attitude of loving the truth, of finding out the truth, turns out to be loving the essential truth. We do not know that for a long time, not until we discover our essential nature and recognize it as truth that is not an event or a statement.

Thus it is possible to experience egoless beingness, to be, as a substantial presence that is not a mental construct, and still live a human, personal life, in which love, work, knowledge, creativity and accomplishment make sense, a human sense. This true existence, this presence, this being beyond time that makes sense of human and personal life, is the Personal Essence. It is the reality of which ego is only a reflection. It is the truly integrated and developed human being. This is the beautiful presence that the traditional literature of work schools calls the “pearl beyond price.” The experience of universal impersonality of ultimate reality occurs when the separate individuality is transcended, when the separate individuality is seen not to be our true self. But this is the result of transcending the personality in its totality. Something different happens when we investigate the personality’s manifestations in more detail, exploring the hidden essential truth within it. The ego is a reflection of this true element of Being, the Personal Essence, and exploring the characteristics of the reflection can lead us to the reality being reflected. By isolating and understanding the elements of the false, we can begin to approach the elements of the real.

Truth is one of the aspects of Essence, which expresses its property of essential Truth as the very existence of Truth, rather than as truth related to some object or idea. This aspect reveals that Truth is ultimately a presence, a self-existing quality of Being, and not only a quality which qualifies something else. Truth is then experienced as a dense and substantial presence, solid and real. It is a presence that has luster, warmth, intimacy, and realness. It is a solidity that is not corrupted by lies and falsehood, but can expose all lies and falsehood. Although it is dense and solid like gold, Truth possesses heart qualities like warmth and intimacy. There is a sense of purity to it, a sense of incorruptability, a sense of being the real thing. It functions, in part, to give the self the capacity to discern truth and separate it from falsehood, a capacity needed not only for spiritual development but for survival. The way it provides the self with this capacity is the way pure solid gold provides the jeweler with a way of discriminating it from its imitations and alloys. This capacity is needed because lies and falsehood usually function to take the place of truth, presenting themselves as truth.